Writing, writing and a bit of history, Plantagenets mainly

Tag Archives: writing

More wonderful news for The End! After having won the Limelight Film Awards ‘Best Horror’, the film was selected for the Phoenix Film Festival (Leicester, England) and also for the OshKosh Horror Film Festival in Wisconsin, USA.

We also just received the news that The End has been selected for the British Horror Film Festival to be held in Leicester Square, London, England this October. The Brilliant crew at We Are Heroes Films have remastered the sound for this prestigious event and also put together this trailer….http://vimeo.com/106965525

A couple of days ago I got the fabulous news from Film Director, Raj Pathak (We are Heroes Films), that we’ve been nominated for an award at the Limelight Film Awards, due to be held on June 9th! It’s a highly prestigious event to be held in the Troxy, a beautiful Art Deco venue in East London.

Not surprisingly we’re nominated in the Horror category – and if we go through and win ‘Film of the Night’ then we’ll get a massive £10,000 production budget – as you can imagine I’m hoping this might go towards making the feature length version! It’s especially good timing as I’ve just submitted the completed script to We Are Heroes.

Even if we don’t win, the nomination alone is exciting and has only been made possible by the combination of such wonderful talents as Crash Taylor, Raj Pathak and N-FX special effects. Not to mention the amazing crew and actors – especially Shelley Draper, who really brought all the emotion of her character off the paper and onto the screen.

Although I’m not able to be there, I’m delighted to promote the sequel to ‘Don’t Go In the Basement’ event. A free night of shorts from Nottingham and the surrounding areas. No theme this time, so it’ll be a proper mixed bag. There will be music video’s, live action shorts, animations and other surprises. You will laugh, you will cry and naturally, given our obsession with horror, there will be some scares along the way.

My zombie short The End will be screening there. (I’m busy writing the prequel so no rest for the wicked!)

A story by a Sara Roberts, a wonderful young writer, recently published on Hackney Writers site…

“Out back late”. The note was pinned to the fridge with the plastic magnet they got in Vegas, with glitter sparkles trapped inside. Amanda sighed and heaved the bags of shopping off the floor onto the Formica table with its mysterious patterns of coffee stains like corn circles….Found..

Like this:

Na No Wri Mo, is a great excuse to get out there and just write – the aim, to churn out a novel, to hit word count targets. It’s a great movement, pulling writers, ex writers and new writers out of their malaise, smashing their writers block and fostering creativity.

But it’s not for everyone. You may not want to write a novel, it might be poetry or script writing that captures your mood. Or it might be that you’d prefer not to churn out X number of words every day, that you want to work on the quality of your work.

So, the lovely, supportive group that is Cafe Aphra, have started their own writing challenge for November. You can set the challenge yourself, knowing others are doing just the same. So, if you need a bit of support or want to declare you November writing goal, check in at Cafe Aphra.

That’s right, I’m getting nasty. Why? I guess it’s just the way I’m feeling at the moment – and the way I’m feeling at the moment is that I need a pep talk. In fact, I need a good kick up the arse. I figure other ‘aspiring writers’ are feeling the same way; and if they aren’t they will, at some point. So, now I’ve got your hackles up, I’ll begin.

So, aspiring writers everywhere, the very first thing I have to say is stop ‘aspiring’. You don’t ‘aspire’ to get out of bed – you get out of bed. You either write or you don’t, simple as that. The only caveat I’ll give is, of all the things you should aspire to, being a better writer is one of them. I’m not allowing complacency here, don’t think I’ve started being nice, because being a better writer takes hard work – so register the aspiration and get toiling.

Almost everyone wants to be a writer, possibly almost everyone could be, so what makes you different? What’s your USP? (Don’t answer that last question, I don’t need to know.) What you need to know is that the only way to find your voice, to be different and to express yourself fully, is to write with integrity. Don’t try to become ‘like’ another writer, don’t force yourself to write in a style that isn’t you; however much you might want it to be. Just write, see what happens. That’s you right there on the page. If anything sounds corny, maybe you unconsciously stole it from somewhere. How would you say it? Write it again in your own voice.

Make sure you understand the rules though, don’t go thinking grammar is ‘old hat’ and doesn’t apply to your modern take on society. That’s great and everything, but unless you’ve published ten best sellers no publisher will touch you with a barge pole if you’ve not learnt the rules. Once you have, then start breaking them.

Now I’m going to tell you how to get published…. Right place, right time, right publisher, decent finished manuscript. You might be hailed the next Shakespeare ten years after you’ve snuffed it, that’s life. It’s a bitch. Point is, there is no true path, there is no magic wand. You have to keep trying and on the plus side, you probably have more chance of getting published than winning a million on the lottery. Don’t give up the day job and while you’re stacking shelves in Sainsbury, plan your next chapter.
You’re rubbish, I’m rubbish, that novel you just finished reading – that’s rubbish too. You will have days feeling like an amateur. You will look back at what you’ve spent months or years writing and think its the biggest pile of crap you’ve ever seen. Maybe it is, maybe tomorrow you’ll love it again. Maybe tomorrow you’ll still think it’s awful and at the same time a publisher will be reading it thinking ‘this is really good!’ That book you just finished reading; the author will probably have had these exact same thoughts somewhere along the line. Let it pass, put it down, come back later. Keep writing.

On the other hand, there are people out there who will reject you: Agents, editors, reviewers, readers, even boyfriends and husbands, will say things you don’t want to hear. Stop crying, take it on the chin, absorb the constructive bits of criticism and carry on. If you give up you’re no longer a writer – is that an option? No. Don’t fall for jealousy either. Some of your writer buddies may get published. Once you’ve had the party and slapped them on the back, brace yourself for the stab of envious pain – ‘Why oh why isn’t it me?!!’ You didn’t get lucky. Get over it, keep trying.

Keep writing and finish it. No I don’t want to hear how you’re unsure about the plot, or the characterisation, just finish it. If you don’t you won’t know how it ends or what you missed out in the middle. If you get in the habit of leaving things unfinished, pretty soon everything will be unfinished.

If you’re a writer, you write because you have to, because to not write feels wrong. It can be a thankless, solitary, badly paid, unsociable pursuit. On the plus side you will never have just one life, you will have as many lives and experiences as you want, in your mind and pouring onto the page. You are the lucky one after all.